


sea change

by astralsilk



Category: Aggretsuko
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 21:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14481573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralsilk/pseuds/astralsilk
Summary: Haida leaves late on Friday and ends up staying up all night drinking Sapporo in his underwear in the dark, feeling something light in his chest filling up the breathless, aching hollow space that used to live there — the slow-healing wound he’d been nursing since he was twenty-two. He’s not young and stupid and in love any more, but it’s a feeling he recognizes all over again, knowing that he’s fucked but too stubborn to derive the answer for himself.





	sea change

**Author's Note:**

> i guess i'm a big ol' fucking furry now

A month after she calls off the engagement, Haida’s plan is to keep his head down, shut up, and nurse the still-open wound Tategami gave him when she left until his heart is swallowed by the scar tissue. Everyone at the office assumes he doesn’t want to talk about it except for Fenneko, who is knocked uncharacteristically off balance as she tries to tiptoe around the minefield of his relationship issues.

He keeps showing up to work, because he has to, but he doesn’t bother pretending to be anything but soul-crushingly depressed about it. It’s so awkward that nobody has anything else to say. He dedicates himself to his work, showing his face only at mandatory office parties, and whenever anyone tries to needle him about his love life he draws into his shell so tightly that it only takes three months of his behavior before Fenneko gets fed up and smacks him upside the head.

The next day they decide through a series of gestures and half-spoken apologies that they were just going to pretend that all his weird pining shit was already over.

That March, the company makes forty million yen on coffee futures and the size of the accounting department triples.

Fenneko brings one of the newbies into the break room to eat with them on a whim, a short-statured red panda with wide, anxious eyes and ill-fitting work shoes. When Tategami left, she’d still been in her work uniform, filling a bag with the detritus of her daily life even as she was speaking to him. Haida shakes his head, as if the action will dispel the memory.

“Douzo,” the new girl says, bowing deeply. “My name is Retsuko.”

“Nice to meet you, Retsuko.” Haida says.

 

* * *

 

Haida likes numbers, and he likes the vision of himself as a businessman with a family he never sees and coworkers he drinks too much with — the Japanese dream — so when the man who interviews him at the firm asks him why he wants the job he waxes poetic about the beauty of tracking accounts payable.

That’s how he ends up in the accounting department making Excel spreadsheets until 8pm every night, on a first-name basis with the man who runs the ramen-ya in the alley behind the building. He lives in a 1k apartment and shares a desk with a sly, attractive fennec fox from Yokohama. Her name is Fenneko, and they bond over their shitty intern experiences and vending machine addiction.

“One day,” Haida gripes over the break room table. “I’ll leave this place.”

“Where are you going to go?” Fenneko asks reasonably, because they’re both punch-drunk from crunching numbers and Haida’s idea is a terrible one. “What other work are you possibly going to do?”

“I don’t know — something — fucking anything that isn’t this.” Haida says, tugging at his fur.

“Ganbatte,” she says dryly. “I believe in you.”

 

* * *

 

Half of marketing’s charges aren’t showing up in the GL and Tsubone’s on a rampage. She’s been taking it out on Retsuko in particular, and Haida can’t say he blames Retsuko for crying. Their department is on unofficial standstill because none of their accruals procedures are designed to operate during the end of days.

“I think I’m going to puke,” Retsuko wallows, sprawled across the break room table in a position that she spends more time in these days than not. The majority of the late accruals have been making their way to her desk, hand-picked by Tsubone when she’s not harassing the interns with her seemingly endless supply of jars to open.

“Suck it back up,” Fenneko says, tapping away at her phone.

Days like this have become normal. Haida has fuck all to do because he doesn’t work on accruals, normally, and even though it’s none of his business he can’t help the bolt of guilt that strikes him at the sight of Retsuko laid out in tears.

“Hey,” he says, though he’s not entirely sure _why — “_ Retsuko. I can help, if you need it.”

“Ah,” she says, her face lighting up. “Haida, if you really don’t mind.” She clasps her paws together and Haida thinks: cute.

He does mind, and it’s tedious, back-breaking work to sort out all of her rookie mistakes, but he finds himself doing it anyway. He got into accounting because he liked numbers, originally, but liking numbers never prepared him for the tedium of finance and the frustration of sorting through poorly scrawled, coffee-stained receipts from sales.

Haida leaves late on Friday and ends up staying up all night drinking Sapporo in his underwear in the dark, feeling something light in his chest filling up the breathless, aching hollow space that used to live there — the slow-healing wound he’d been nursing since he was twenty-two. He’s not young and stupid and in love any more, but it’s a feeling he recognizes all over again, knowing that he’s fucked but too stubborn to derive the answer for himself.

 

* * *

 

It happens like this:

Haida’s 18 when he meets Tategami. Their parents introduced them with the intent of arranging marriage, but quickly find there’s no need for the formality. It’s a whirlwind romance. Tategami chronicled the entire thing on social media. He used to think that was charming, her need to document every moment of their lives and put it on display. He thought stupidly at the time that it was her way of showing him off. Once he settled down at the firm and the reality of his ambition — or lack of it — set in, Tategami proved him wrong.

It’s probably why it hurt so badly, why it still feels like a burning hole in his chest. Haida thought he was safe because there had only been proof that Tategami was in love, love, love with him, over and over to the world and to the internet she had said: I love him. He didn’t realize she wasn’t saying it to him, or for him, until it was too late. He was so busy congratulating himself for having his life together: a steady job, a fiancé, his own apartment, that he failed to realize he’d already given Tategami the ammunition she needed.

He used to think that if he met her again, he would ask Tategami why she’d agreed to marry him in the first place, whether she ever regretted it, if she’d think of coming back to him. Instead, he tucks those feelings inside the hundreds of cells in his spreadsheets, one kana at a time, chipping away at the ache.

* * *

 

It’s fall, the fresh snap of cold shaking down the last of the city’s foliage, and all that remains is the sharp smell of the air and a looming, dim sky. It’s nearing the end of the quarter and rest feels more like a myth than a possibility. Director Ton keeps his abacus fisted so tightly that Haida suspects he’s sleeping under his desk with it. Tsunoda is in fine form, whittling away at the work on her desk by shamelessly foisting it on the rest of them, and Haida takes about three hours of this before he stands up and declares that he needs a fucking drink.

When Fenneko sets down her phone, Retsuko has already worked herself into a frenzy.

“I want to go home,” she wails, tears punctuated by the cold clink of the soft drink can Haida’s digging out of the vending machine. He feels that strange, sinking feeling that he’s become accustomed to when Retsuko gets this way, a restless desire that he can’t pinpoint or name. Tategami, for all that she put on display for the world, was not one to be so free with her emotions. When she was upset, Tategami would hide herself away from him, sometimes for days, refusing to show any weakness. He used to think that was one of her strengths. In the end, it only meant that she’d shut him out.

But for all that he admires Retsuko’s genuine openness, Haida doesn’t know how to deal.

He sits at the table, passing his bag of snacks towards Retsuko, who at this point is positively frothing at the mouth. She doesn’t acknowledge them, and Haida’s internal panic meter tips into the danger zone.

“Retsuko,” he soothes, because she’s being so _loud_. He covers one of Retsuko’s paws with his own. “Relax, okay? It will be alright.”

Retsuko pauses her crying and draws back, all stiff upper lip. The immediacy of it startles him. “Yes, okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She smiles at Haida, paw still clasped in his. He feels his face heat up.

Fenneko is looking at him.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Fenneko says, her expression impenetrable. Haida jerks his paw back in an aborted motion. It isn’t anything, he thinks, and Fenneko should know that.

Retsuko has torn into the bag of snacks with aplomb, the thin veil of calm that seems to accompany her everywhere she goes fitted firmly back into place. Haida thinks again: cute, but buries the thought somewhere deep, somewhere he doesn’t want to go.

 

* * *

Terrible revenue means Haida works longer hours and starts eating a lot of takoyaki from the street vendor two blocks from the office. Retsuko, who doesn’t seem to eat at all, pulls him aside and says, “Haida-san, I think you need a proper meal.”

Haida’s aware the invite is motivated almost entirely by pity, but Fenneko tags along and they make an evening of it, and by the third round of drinks there’s genuine friendship at stake.

Every relationship for Haida starts like this now, scared and hesitant, tiptoeing into the room and grabbing him from behind until it’s just as tangled and complicated as everything was with Tategami, but for now Haida is content just to eat with the two of them, answering Fenneko’s sly smiles with his own lopsided grin and laughing a little too brashly at Retsuko’s jokes.

Fenneko is grilling Retsuko about her love life, but she dodges the questions with a vague, anxious humming they’ve grown accustomed to interpreting. Haida finds it endearing, and judging by the artful look on Fenneko’s face, she does as well.

Haida’s not listening, not really; he’s loosened his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves, happy to just take in the buzz of his surroundings as the alcohol seeps into his brain. He feels comfortable with himself in a way he hasn’t in years; Tategami didn’t drink, and only liked eating out at formal restaurants they couldn’t really afford. It’s been a while since he’s thought about her, longer than he ever thought he could go.

“What about you, Haida?” Fenneko asks, interrupting his thoughts, “Is there anyone you’re interested in?”

“No,” Haida lies.

“I see,” Fenneko allows, sipping her drink.

They meet up weekly after that.

 

* * *

 

He keeps thinking it can’t get any worse even as he explores new and interesting ways to fuck himself over. Haida tries to keep his head down and avoid the death spiral his heart has tumbled into, mirroring the one in revenue forecasts Director Ton keeps calculating and recalculating as though the outcome will be any different.

Heads start rolling in the upper echelons of the business and Haida thinks, “Oh shit,” because at least three of the executives that founded the company and kept its lights on in the early days have been ousted. Haida keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable downsizing that comes with drops in performance but it never seems to come.

Inexplicably, he thinks of Retsuko. When Haida wakes up in the morning and stares at the roof of his 13-tatami apartment, he doesn’t know whether he’ll lose his job that day, whether he’ll see her again. It’s terrifying, and weirdly freeing. He buys a leather jacket and takes up smoking. They spend a lot of time at the bar.

“What is the point of torturing us?” Retsuko asks, picking at the coaster under her pint. Haida gapes at the way her claws shred the cardboard. “Why do they keep bringing us in?”

“It would be cheaper to fire us,” Fenneko agrees, daring to look up from her phone long enough to burn a hole into the side of Haida’s head with her eyes. Retsuko makes a complicated face. Haida’s seen more of them than his apartment this month. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk, but he can’t look away despite the heat of Fenneko’s gaze. He seems to be having that problem a lot lately.

“You're not helping,” he says quickly. Fenneko shrugs, eyes returning to her phone.

 

* * *

 

Just after, when everything had hurt and it felt like his whole body was open and raw, Haida had thought about running after her. His parents already had lists of names, girls lined up to take Tategami’s place, so he started avoiding his phone whenever his _okasan_ called, sitting around aching and trying to decide if he felt more miserable or humiliated. It was usually about 50:50. Drinking a lot didn’t actually help, because at best it seemed to transform the self-pity into the kind of debilitating _pain_ that left Haida shaking and on his knees. It’s stupid, Haida knows, that more than anything even now he’ll just be hurt. It follows him — to work, to the bar, to bed, and wakes him up from dreamless sleep to eat at his insides, making him question his sanity until he calls his _otosan_ just so he can be lectured and escape the noise in his head.

It’s terrible. It’s so all-encompassing, and Haida remembers sitting in his apartment and thinking about if he were to try and get her back, he’d never be able to put it behind him, to close up the gaping wound she left when she cut herself out of his life. He’ll just have to gaze at it every day in the mirror, maybe for months, maybe for years until there’s no memory of his naïveté and how much Tategami never cared for him after all — never cared about anything other than the appearance of the perfect life. Tategami is just an ugly stain Haida won’t ever be able to clean; she’ll live as that sharp twinge in his chest, the shock of dizziness at a sudden memory of her scent, her laugh. Haida’s not going to let anyone own him that way again.

 

* * *

 

November slips past like a ghost; Haida barely remembers any of it other than pulling all nighters alternating between taking on part of Retsuko’s extra workload and getting shitfaced to avoid the seeming inevitability of their doom. December shows up in a huff, bringing with it a renewed sense of energy. The numbers start creeping back into the black, and it feels like a noose has been loosened around the department’s collective neck.

They’re sitting in the izakaya at the foot of the building at 9pm on a Tuesday, and the bar is heaving with fellow accountants trying to drown the stress of the previous quarter in sake. They’re all more than a little drunk. Haida is challenging his own highest score on Cookie Run, halfway through his second beer when Retsuko taps him on the shoulder and says, “Um, Haida?”

It feels like it burns where she touches him, and it takes all of his willpower not to reel back, and even more of it not to lean in.

“Ah, Retsuko, what is it?” he says, momentarily stupefied.

“Thank you,” she says, “for all your help.” He nods. Her face is a flaming red, from the embarrassment or the alcohol, he can’t tell. He’s staring again.

“Oh,” he says, “It was nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Haida only goes back up to the office because he forgot his phone charger, and he’s in the middle of unplugging it from under his desk when Fenneko corners him.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m — I’m just standing here,” he says, because there’s no point in pretending. He glances over his shoulder to check the rest of the office, mercifully empty at the end of the day.

“Seriously,” Fenneko says, “are you okay?”

His instinct is to lie, but they both know what she means. He stops to think about it.

Haida’s not sure he's ever been okay when it comes to Retsuko. He’s been delighted and intrigued and if he admits it to himself, head over heels, in love with the idea of the Retsuko he’s built up in his mind. Sweet, dependable Retsuko — but Haida’s not the kind of boy who throws himself at the feet of women anymore. He’d never pushed it beyond smiling a little too much, being a little too obvious, and Haida’s not one to burn himself twice.

“Yes,” he says, instead of all that. “I’m okay.”

 

* * *

 

Fenneko catches cold and leaves promptly at 5pm every day for the train station in a whirlwind of sniffles and quiet, sour-faced grumbling.

“Don’t mind me,” she says the first week, when they are expected to go out. “You two should have fun.” She looks at Haida. Haida wants to shoot himself in the face.

“Oh no, we can miss a week,” Retsuko frets, circling around Fenneko with a tissue box,  practically throwing them at her feet. “Just get well quickly so we can all go out together next time!”

The second week is the same, but by the third it’s the new year, and Fenneko insists, _no, really, go on without me, it’s a holiday_ , and Haida finds himself at the izakaya clutching his Sapporo for dear life while Retsuko sits across from him getting progressively drunker.

“Stop,” Retsuko gasps, “No more!”

Haida nearly chokes. “You seem to enjoy it.”

Retsuko is clutching her stomach, trying to catch her breath. “If you make me laugh any more, I’m going to be sick.”

Haida smiles, and he’s drunk enough that he’s stopped staring at Retsuko’s face. He can’t tell if that’s good or bad; it means his eyes are wandering everywhere else: to the delighted twitch of her ears, the fresh polish on her claws, the way her neck is glowing red from the alcohol.

Retsuko collapses on her back to the floor. She kicks him underneath the table by accident, and Haida has to clamp down on the feeling that flares up inside him. “Hmm,” she says, resting an arm over her eyes. “Why did you let me drink so much, Haida? We both have work tomorrow.”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Haida says, “I thought we should have some fun.”

Retsuko closes her eyes and it isn’t long before Haida hears the soft sound of her snoring underneath the kotatsu, pint half-full and dead to the world. He can’t stop the feeling of warmth that envelops him, sipping coolly at his own drink while she rests. When he’s drunk like this, the feeling is less scary, like he could embrace it if he tried.

Haida never felt the same warmth with Tategami, never sat like this in a comfortable silence while she slept. Tategami was always on, on, on, and hyper-aware of her surroundings; to relax so openly in a public space like this was beyond the realm of possibility for her. If she could see him now he wonders what she would think, his sleeves rolled up and tie half off, sprawled out drunkenly over a kotatsu in a scummy izakaya full of surly accountants and businessmen trying to drink their problems away as the clock ticks towards the new year.

His thoughts are interrupted when Retsuko bolts upright at midnight, wailing, “Oh no! I fell asleep! That’s so embarrassing --” over the shouts and hollering of the bar patrons. It takes twenty minutes to calm her down, and then ten more when she starts another round of apologies for forgetting to wish him a happy new year.

He walks her to the train station even though it’s in the opposite direction of his apartment. There’s snow, now, falling gently to the sidewalk and dusting it with the soft signs of winter. Soon, it will melt into slush and become an ugly nuisance, but for now it is beautiful. The warmth Haida had felt before is still embracing him as he walks home, and Haida thinks that soon it will become a nuisance, too, but for now it burns with the flame of possibility, and Haida thinks: maybe.

 

* * *

 

January creeps into Tokyo like a stray dog, wary and unsure. There’s still the cold snap of wind through the entry doors as Haida taps the snow from his boots, but it’s a softer kind of cold. He’s hungover, and late, which means he’s about to get his ear chewed by Tsubone, or worse, the extra accounts she’s been pawning off on Retsuko all winter are going to make their way to his desk. The fact that they make their way to his desk anyway doesn’t really escape him.

It’s a slow morning in the accounting department, which means that it’s pretty much open season on Haida the moment he walks in the door.

“Haida,” Fenneko calls as he sets down in front of his computer, “Late again I see. You and Retsuko were out late?” She’s giving him a considering look, which he finds unsettling. Even more unsettling is the way that Kabae and Tsunoda are trying to pretend that they aren’t listening in, which they most definitely are.

Tsunoda clears her throat.

Haida looks up to see Retsuko standing over him, calm and bright for the way her head must be pounding, holding a stack of receipts that look like they’re more coffee stains than numbers. She’s obviously in a good mood, which amplifies Haida’s sour one tenfold and makes him feel like a slug.

Haida’s brain freezes for a moment, and he feels like he should say something like, “Good morning, Retsuko,” except the only thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Um, hi.” Fenneko is practically in paroxysms of delight, her grin so wide that Haida can see her fangs out of the corner of his eyes.

“You’re looking well this morning,” Retsuko says. If it weren’t for her kind nature he would be certain she was mocking him.

“He hasn’t died of scurvy from all the takoyaki,” Fenneko says, seizing on the topic.

Haida grimaces.

Retsuko lets go of the stack and it lands on his desk with a small plop. “Definitely looking well!” she says, and Haida would have thought that was the end of it until Fenneko’s  soft “ha ha ha ha ha ha” reaches his ears. Haida knows his face is on fire, which is not going to help his case.

“So, Haida,” Fenneko says after a moment. “Is there anyone you’re interested in?”

Haida buries his head in the receipts and refuses to answer.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know anything about accounting


End file.
